


weighing the probability of luck versus fate

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, being silly and stupid with each other IS a form of intimacy send tweet, time lords are face blind :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22887316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: once they're safe and settled after escaping the land of fiction, the doctor tries to explain why he didn't recognize jamie's face
Relationships: Second Doctor/Jamie McCrimmon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	weighing the probability of luck versus fate

**Author's Note:**

> literally i'm rewatching 2's seasons right now and its just like (2 and jamie: joke and banter about something silly) (me: loses my mind)

“Do you really not know what my face looks like?” Jamie asked the question on a gentle, pleasant evening. He was tucked up under the Doctor’s blankets, watching the Doctor work at his desk across the room. 

“Of course I know,” the Doctor replied, stripping the casing off a little copper wire for the dimensional stabilizer he was working on. “You’re right here.” 

“Right, but if I-” Jamie turned over, so he was facing away. “What do I look like?”

The Doctor looked up. “Oh, that’s cheating. Well, you’ve got- you’ve got a nose. You’ve got teeth and eyes.”

“What color are my eyes?” Jamie asked. 

“They are… they’re…”

“Come on, you’ve only been seeing them for years.” Jamie didn’t sound cross; on the contrary, he sounded like it might be a source of amusement. 

“They’re brown, aren’t they,” the Doctor said, trying to sound sure. “Your hair’s brown, your eyes are brown too.” 

Jamie turned back over, and he laughed.

“What, was I wrong? No I wasn’t.” 

“Grey,” Jamie said, thumbing at his nose as he tried to stop laughing. “They’re grey. What’s it with you, then? Why can’t you remember?”

“I can remember fine,” the Doctor grumbled, twisting a tiny bolt in his device with a set of jewelry pliers. “I just… I remember important things, like birthdays and history. Do you know how much history I’ve got to keep inside this head?”

“Aye, right,” Jamie said knowingly. “So much history you haven’t got room for how to fly the ship, I expect.” 

“Tish tosh,” muttered the Doctor. He was peering at a piece of circuitry through a little spyglass, moving tiny pieces about. 

“When’s my birthday?”

“October the fourth,” the Doctor answered neatly. “And the day I met you was April the sixteenth, seventeen forty-six. I do remember.” He set down his spyglass and looked over at Jamie, who was grinning a silly grin he returned on impulse. 

“Then why don’t you know what I look like?” Jamie pushed. 

“Really?”

“Really. I’ve only been asking for a good while now.” Jamie took a pillow and folded his arms over it. 

“People on my planet,” the Doctor began, going over to sit on the edge of the bed, because he didn’t feel like doing any more work tonight anyways, “we change our faces sometimes. Often, even, when you put it into perspective with how many times a person like you, say, can change yours. Jamie, if I were to take a gun and shoot you right now, what would happen?”

“I’d die.” Jamie was frowning, brow furrowed in a way that suggested he really was trying to follow, he just hadn’t figured out where the Doctor was going with it yet. 

“But if you shot me…?”

“You’d die too, you’re not immortal.” Jamie said it definitavely. “You’ve told me that before.” 

“And you’re right, I’m not immortal,” the Doctor agreed. “Not quite. But what would kill you would just make me change. Put me in a new body, with a new face. It’s my people’s way of- of cheating death. You know. You get twelve goes at it, and once you’re through all of them, then you die permanently.”

Jamie blinked. “I forget sometimes,” he said, after a beat. “That you’re not… you know.” 

“Human?”

Jamie nodded. “When were you planning on telling me that? Seems like a bit of a big thing.” 

“I was planning on waiting until it happened,” the Doctor admitted. “I thought it would be a bit of a surprise for you, and I’d explain it afterwards. Not very conscientious, I realize now. I thought it would’ve been a chance to make a joke or two, but… Listen, Jamie, you’re bound to see it sooner or later, stuck together as we are. It’s not as big a deal as it sounds, I promise you.” 

“It doesn’t feel as bad as dying, though, does it?” Jamie looked worried. 

“Oh, not at all. Just makes your head a bit stuffy for a bit. Terrible vertigo, too, but it passes within the hour,” the Doctor assured him, giving him a pat on the shoulder. It wasn’t entirely true, but what could you do? He didn’t want Jamie to fret over it. 

“Well, that’s not so bad, then,” Jamie said, looking down. “But how does it stop you from knowing faces? Couldn’t you learn the new one if someone changed?”

The Doctor clasped his hands together and gave a little shrug. “It’s just not economical, Jamie-dear. Somewhere along the line we decided that there were other, easier ways of recognizing people, and we didn’t need to know the face they were wearing at the moment to know who they were. So much simpler.” 

“Then how do you tell?” Jamie propped his head up on a hand.

“Well, it’s… I don’t know how to say it,” the Doctor realized. “It’s their energy, it’s their…” He put a hand on Jamie’s chest. “Here. Your sense of person comes from here, to me.” 

“You’re funny,” Jamie said, sitting up carefully to rest his chin on the Doctor’s shoulder. “D’you need eye glasses, you think?”

“Oh, you’re such a bother.” The Doctor elbowed him away. “I do not.” 

Jamie waited a second and then settled back, now with his hand as a cushion between the Doctor’s shoulder and his chin. “You know what I feel like, is that it? Not what I look like, but what I feel like?”

The Doctor gave it a thought. “That might be the closest way to describe it,” he admitted, turning his head to look at Jamie and coming nose to nose with him. “It’s not perfect, but at least you’ll understand it. Do you mind that I can’t quite say what you look like?”

“No,” Jamie answered. “I like your way better. I mean, it was a bit inconvenient, but it’s… I think I like that you know me like that.” 

The Doctor kissed him quickly and then shrugged him off, leaning down to untie his shoes. “You’re very easy to please, Jamie.” 

“Maybe, but I figure that’s a good thing, right?” 

“Yes, I’m sure.” The Doctor also pulled off his coat, and then got properly into bed. “Makes life better, I think.” 

“Aye, me too.” Jamie switched the bedside lamp off, and the room fell into darkness. 

The Doctor pushed Jamie very gently down onto his back so he could use his chest as a pillow, and once they were both settled, he found he couldn’t stop thinking about Jamie’s attempted definition of Time Lord recognition. It made such a simple function seem so important, put emotional weight onto an everyday sense. He didn’t mind, he realized. 

After a few minutes, Jamie asked, quietly, “Doctor?”

“Yes, Jamie-dear?” 

“What do you know me by?” Jamie sounded sleepy. “I mean- what is it I feel like?”

The Doctor felt Jamie put an arm around his shoulders and pull him closer, and he figured he had no reason not to be honest. “Home. Maybe. Not that I’d even know what that is, really, if you look at the past few hundred years, but I…” He cleared his throat. “I’m guessing, and I’m- I’m still figuring all this out, but I think that’s it.” 

And then Jamie was laughing this fond, disbelieving laugh, and he said, “I’m so happy you found me. Can you- just think, what if we’d left by the time you got to the cabin?”

“Cabin?” the Doctor repeated, trying to figure out which one Jamie meant. They’d been in several things he might call a cabin recently. 

“You know,” Jamie said, and he was running a hand through the Doctor’s hair. “Where I met you and Polly and Ben.” 

“Oh, it doesn’t bear thinking about,” the Doctor replied, dramatic because he knew it would make Jamie smile. Then he was quiet for a moment, listening to Jamie’s heartbeat. When he was sure that thinking about it under the right set of circumstances could make him cry, he added, “It really doesn’t.” 

“It’s got to be luck, right? We’re just lucky.” Jamie said it surely. “You don’t just bump into someone you fit this well with, it doesn’t just happen. I think we’ve got the best luck in the world.”

“I think,” returned the Doctor, “that anyone who does as much running from disaster as we do can’t rightfully be described as having good luck at all.” 

“Maybe it comes and goes.” 

The Doctor grinned; it was a funny thought. “Maybe it’s not luck,” he suggested. 

“What else would it be?”

“Well, maybe fate, or-”

Jamie snorted, and he half sat up in bed, laughing, and dislodging the Doctor. “That’s not real,” he said, as if it were obvious, and silly to consider. 

“There isn’t scientific proof one way or another,” the Doctor countered, and he sat up as well. He could vaguely make out Jamie’s shape in the dark. “So who’s to say? You?”

“I mean-”

“The inner machinations of the universe must be heavy knowledge to carry, Jamie-love, can you-”

“Oh, aye, terribly, but I didn’t-”

“Since you-”

“I was just-”

And then they couldn’t carry on for laughing. After a good few minutes, Jamie’s hand found the side of the Doctor’s face and he clumsily pulled them close together, forehead to forehead. 

The Doctor felt their psychic selves mix, and he saw in Jamie’s mind his own love mirrored. 

When he’d definitively stopped laughing, Jamie said, quietly, “I like that we’re each other’s home.” He drew a breath, careful. “I like that I can lose anything and as long as I’ve still got you I’ll be alright. It’s- I feel safe.” 

“Good,” the Doctor replied, touching a hand to Jamie’s chest. “I wouldn’t want you feeling anything but.” 

“Lucky us, eh?” 

“Yes, lucky-” He stopped, realizing what Jamie’d done. “Oh, you.” 

Jamie grinned. 

The Doctor ignored him, lying back down. He was happily faux-irritated, knowing that Jamie would think it was the funniest thing since their last joke. So he closed his eyes in a huff, in love with how safe Jamie felt with him and with how Jamie made it easy to be happy and with Jamie. 

A moment later, Jamie was lying beside him, head on his shoulder. 

They settled into each other, just as always not able to fully relax until they shared some form of contact. 

After another moment, Jamie whispered, “And, Doctor, one more thing. My eyes, they’re-”

“Grey, I know,” the Doctor finished. He pressed a kiss to Jamie’s forehead. “I’ll remember now.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !


End file.
